Case: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 2003

THE STORY

Traditionally, education leaders are reluctant to be seen as concerned with such matters as branding, and generally are thus poor design clients. In 2000, MIT's President Charles Vest was no exception. MIT's reputation was stellar; why should it need a logo? Its school and department brands (some of which had created logos) were felt to be more important. But MIT's Publishing Services Bureau, newly organized to centralize design as well as printing and forced to reinvent the wheel with every assignment, saw the waste in the lack of a central logo, indeed of any established graphic identity. Patiently, they built a leadership constituency headed by Vice President Kathryn Willmore and in time, won approval to create a central visual brand.

By April 2003, when the resulting system of design tools (suberbly presented on-line) was launched, it was still defended as saving "significant cost in staff hours and vendor expenses." But it had come to be seen more importantly, as a means to increase and refresh MIT's overall presence, and to accomodate a non-mandatory process of brand centralization. MIT now talks of the logo's purposes as "Ambassador, Unifier, Economizer."

Director Bernstein convened impressive teams of guiding sponsors, planners and designers, the latter including the principals of three Boston design agencies (Kathleen Forsythe, Alice Hecht and John Kramer) as well as the famous type designer Matthew Carter.

The end products: a strikingly forceful wordmark (a monogram), a simple color palette and materials templates. (Departments still retain their own signatures, however; there's no new signature system.) Launch was scaled and timed for maximum on-campus impact.

When he retired, President Vest surprised the team by claiming the 2003 branding as a significant event on his watch.